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June 25, 2013

Building A Better Prison

It might not seem like an architect’s area of expertise to reform inhumane prison conditions. But like attorneys, journalists and doctors, architects have a code of professional ethics. They’re required to “uphold human rights in all of their professional endeavors.”

Architect Raphael Sperry says that prisons designed for prolonged solitary confinement violate the human rights of the inmates, and that he and other architects are ethically bound to do something about it.

At California’s Pelican Bay Supermax Prison, cells don't have windows. Inmates are in their cells for 22 or 23 hours a day, only leaving to visit the shower or the exercise yard (a windowless room with twenty-foot high concrete walls).

Sperry says he wants the American Institute of Architects to amend their to their ethics code to say: "Members shall not design spaces intended for execution or for torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, including prolonged solitary confinement."

Jennifer Thompson was a college student when she was brutally raped. During the attack, she tried to memorize what the man looked like so she could identify him later. She pointed to Ronald Cotton, and he spent 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

John Conroy is an investigative journalist who is best known for the years of work he put into uncovering evidence of torture in a Chicago police station. Also - the story of a mailbox, a lakeside bench and a secret community project.

Serena Nunn was nineteen years old when she was arrested in a drug bust. Her boyfriend was the dealer, but she got sixteen years behind bars. After she was released from prison, she graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in the spring of 2006. Also in this show: Immigrating To The U.S.

Mike Anderson spent 17 years in prison for murder. It was his poetry, and his desire to evolve, that helped him get out of prison early and successfully re-enter society. Mike now has a job, and a family, and he's working with young people - as he says, "polishing souls."

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Prior to the ruling, host Dick Gordon spoke with an activist and a resident who were at the center of the civil rights fight in Holmes County, Mississipi.